


marvellously daisy

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Coming Out, Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29448351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Alexander has a suspicion about Daisy and Amina, and seeks her out after DSS at Fallingford to confirm it.
Relationships: Daisy Wells & Alexander Arcady
Kudos: 16





	marvellously daisy

“Daisy?”

I turned around to see Alexander smiling, toying with his hair in the doorway of the music room. He was wearing a rather nice lambswool jumper, the sleeves pulled over his hands. “Alexander!” I tried to smile as pleasantly as I could at him. With Hazel as the Co-President of the Detective Society and my very best friend, I supposed that it was rather my duty to be kind to her boyfriend. “What is it?”

“Can I sit down?”

Nodding, I moved over and let him sit beside me on the window seat. “Hey,” I said, and he smiled at me awkwardly.

“Hey,” he said, tugging on the sleeve of his jumper. “George is… for the first time in his life, I think he doesn’t know how to say something. But you don’t like me a great deal anyway, so I thought I’d be the one to ask. You and Amina… you are together, aren’t you?”

I felt as if I had swallowed my voice, embarrassingly blinking at him for a few seconds before recovering myself and saying, absolutely perfectly, “Yes, we are. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I did think so!” He had a smile on his face, and I don’t know why I was shocked by that fact. Of course he would: he’s  _ Alexander Arcady _ . No matter how much I wanted to dislike him, he didn’t have a bad bone in his body. Terribly jolly, he continued, “I am alright with it, by the way! So is George. He just couldn’t bear to ask you in case he was wrong about it all.”

“That’s good.” I realised that how glad I really felt that I did not have to worry about him and George was not coming through in my voice. My emotions often get stuck in my head and will not come out of my mouth, and I had to make an effort to smile very broadly to get it across. “Really!”

He grinned back at me and said, “You seemed very happy indeed when you were writing to her! Though I started figuring that something was going on when we were in Egypt. You were so awfully eager to please! And you usually don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of you, which is marvellous. I suppose that’s why I took notice.” Alexander gestured as if each part of his body were attached to a spring that flung it about even after the initial movement had passed. He could never be still, something I rather enjoyed about him.

“She does make me happy!” I agreed, and decided to admit something. “I don’t hate you, Alexander. I was jealous, I thought that you would… take Hazel away from me if you two started dating. I thought that she would stop caring about me, but now I have Amina I have realised that it’s quite different. I don’t care about Hazel any less now I have Amina, and I suppose I needed my own example to realise that.”

“I understand that feeling! Even if it’s not with romance.” Alexander feeling the same surprised me, but I didn’t show it on my face. “I was fearfully jealous when George met  _ you _ . You’re terribly alike and I thought that he would like you more than he likes me. Feelings are horrid sometimes, aren’t they?”

Shocked to be enthusiastically agreeing with Alexander, I said, “Oh,  _ aren’t they _ ? I wish that they could just… you know, kindly  _ not  _ sometimes.”

He laughed heartily. “Do you mind if I ask a question? About you and Amina.”

“Go on?” I promoted him, wondering what on earth Alexander could want to know about my relationship with another girl.

“How do those relationships… happen?” he asked, awkwardly running a hand through his hair and averting his gaze. “I have never quite understood that. It is such a scary thing to tell someone, so says Harold, so I don’t quite understand how you muster up the courage to tell people that you like girls! It must be awfully terrifying every time, how do you do it?”

I realised that I knew exactly how to answer, and it felt brilliant to be back in familiar territory. “For me, it is a process of gauging how each person I tell will react. Hazel is the first person I told. I was dreadfully flustered and scared, which I’m embarrassed to admit, but she had been so kind about people like me on previous cases, and it felt safe to tell her. She was utterly lovely about it all, giving me a huge hug and saying that she would never stop being friends with me over it.”

When I looked up, he had a rather fond look on his face. Instead of feeling bitter about his feelings towards Hazel, it made me feel rather warm from head to toe. “With Amina… I think she worked out that I liked her and started rather bluntly… flirting with me.”

He laughed loudly. “Yes, I was witness to much of that in Egypt!” he said, tugging on his cuff and glancing out the window. “Well, I think that you’re terribly brave, and being very nonchalant about it.”

“Thank you.”

With a smile, he said, “I’m only telling the truth. May I tell George about what you said?”

“Yes!” As he got up to leave, I thought of a conversation from earlier that I had overheard: Alexander asking Hazel for her favourite flower and her telling him that she had no idea what it was. “Oh, Alexander?”

“Yes?” he asked, turning in the doorway.

“Hazel’s favourite flowers are orange tulips. She always lingers on them when we see them in public, she just doesn’t realise.”

With an expression that many people seem to have on their faces around me — the inability to comprehend my general experience being the cause — he said, “Thank you, Daisy! You really are quite marvellous.”

I found that I, once again, agreed with Alexander Arcady. 


End file.
